Thursday, August 16, 2012

Confession Time

Wanna hear my sad and pathetic confession? I had zero idea what teachers did during planning week. If I was forced to guess, I would offer up a weak "um... plan?" and then shrug and hand over my elementary ed diploma in shame. But fear not. I have learned what planning week entails. BOY HAVE I. All of you teachers out there are emphatically nodding your head and now I understand why. Announcement: planning week is not just decorating bulletin boards and sorting manipulatives (though that definitely happened). We just went through four solid days of hardcore meetings. Everything from faculty meetings, to meetings about common core (the new nationwide standards), to meetings about VAM, RTI/MTSS, FAIR, DRA, and CCSS. Y'all, remember when I said educators like acronyms? I wasn't kidding! But in all honesty, I found the meetings really interesting and was so proud of my widdle program at UF because I felt totally prepared to handle everything they threw our way. I was like "Oh! I know what that is! Oh! I know what that is, too!" It was so exciting!

In between all the meetings, we had some time to set up the classroom and would you just look how cute our bulletin board in the hallway looks?! (Recognize the saying? It's one of the 7 habits!) It's so fun seeing all the second grade rooms in our hall. Our hall bulletin boards are the best, though. We have turned our children into bees, frogs, owls, monsters, and safari animals. Just another Thursday in the life of a teacher ;)

You can also see we have a little owl from the board across the hall!

Teacher milestone! My first time introducing myself to the parents! In the past, I was in and out of the class so often we didn't bother introducing ourselves to parents, but this year, I got to add an addendum to my teacher's note and write a little hello. I feel like I shouldn't be this excited..... but I am! haha

Can you see my sweet little paragraph at the bottom? I felt like a celebrity signing 20 of these

Other than that, everything's been busy, but exciting. A lot of the teachers on my team are new or fairly new, so we're all asking questions and I feel a little less of an outsider. I can't wait to meet the kids tomorrow at registration and then start school Monday!

2 comments:

I totally agree with you about pre-planning week. I'm doing my preinternship this semester and the first thing we did Monday morning was sit through a two hour faculty meeting! It's definitely preparing us for the real world of teaching. I love your little paragraph addendum to your teacher's letter, very cute and exciting. It reminds me of how excited I was when I was allowed to put both my partner's last name and mine on our classroom door! :) Anyway, I look forward to reading about your internship experiences and seeing how your experience will relate to my preinternship experiences. :)